Transat Jacques Vabre 2005 Race in Google Earth

November 16, 2005

The Transat Jacques Vabre 2005 is a sailing race involving two-person crews in 50 and 60 foot monohull and multihull racing yachts. They started the race in Le Havre, France in early November and are already well on their way to the race finish in Salvador de Bahia. A Google Earth network link file is being provided by the GIS software company ESRI for following the Transat Jaque Vabre race.
I’m sorry I didn’t report on this one sooner, but the race is still quite exciting as there is no clear winner at the front. The complete race is nearly 4500 nautical miles in length. There are many more boats in this race compared to the Volvo Ocean Race I wrote about earlier. Near the front of the 60 foot monohull class is Sill et Veolia which is crewed by a famous pair of sailors: Roland Jordain and Ellen MacArthur. This should be an exciting finish.
If you’re wondering…

If you’re wondering why some of the boats are headed more east, it’s because the multihull boats (which sail faster) have to go around a the Ascension Islands as part of their course. This is intended to make the finish of the multihulls be closer in time to the monohulls for the spectators.

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was released. He worked in 3D graphics for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank left in 2009 to circumnavigate the earth by sailboat as part of the Tahina Expedition.

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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2005.. Rolex Sydney Hobart Website to interface with Google Earth
Building on the world first feed for its Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in July this year, for the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race CYCA has given viewers the option to see the positions of the yachts on a map in the original Yacht Tracker application, or alternatively to view the race in Google Earth, with yacht positions and standings updated every ten minutes.
Google Earth is a 3D interface to the planet. It combines satellite imagery with a model that can be zoomed, spun and tilted.
The application to allow on-line spectators of the race to view the boats superimposed on photographic images was developed by the CYCA’s website developer partner, Massive Interactive, in conjunction with the CYCA.
Adrian Wiggins, Producer at Massive Interactive, said “when Google launched the free Google Earth application earlier this year we saw the great potential for showing the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. We at Massive hope this brings a new dimension to the race for online spectators.”
This new feature of the race website has been in development for the last 4 months in a co-operative endeavour between Massive and the CYCA, and has been released today.
Getting it working
1. Download and install Google Earth
2. Open the race feed file: cyca_rshyr_yachtrace.kml
This will install a network connection to the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race site and will show yachts from just before the race start at 1:20 PM AEST on 26 December.
# posted by geo999 : 7:56 PM

Ocean racing sure has developed fast since Sir Robin Knox Johnssons around the world sail. Today the yacts fly around the world and things like ” the multi hulls have to round some islands on the other side of the atlantic” is something that would not be belived in any way 30 years ago.
The latest Volvo ocean race yachts are so fast that crew are actually finding it hard to stay onboard! A yacht that does 30 knots also means that any wave that come OVER the boat in stead of under it also does 30 knots, that is more then fast enought to go water skiing on that water speed!

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